Two Benches

"Oh you old woman. She said it again,  oh you old woman"

Stuart Maclean,  Rock of Ages

from his Vinyl Cafe Stories

So I finally finished my seat carving bench. I'm my old shop at my old house during my old life I had a pretty rough but effective small bench that I used to carve seats. What's so ideal about it is the small size allows me to carve all the way around the seat without having to unclamp the seat. Because as you carve a seat the grain is constantly changing so must your approach to the seat. 

My new shop is a converted one car garage so every foot counts and I made a couple chairs with my big bench and while it's possible clamping and unclamping turned into a pain. So while watching Curtis' YouTube videos I saw this bench and built one with his plans. To be honest I totally messed up and somehow put the vise on the wrong leg but it's fine. Who knows it may be better this way.  The plywood box is filled with old nuts and bolts and such from my new job and weighs around 200 lbs. 

Here is my other new bench.  A fair bit different to say the least. The legs I welded up from old box tube and the top and shelf are ⅜ plate which will withstand years and years of millwright and welding abuse. I like welding tables (oddly in fab and machine shops they are called tables not benches)  tall around 42 to 44 inches for welding.  I may paint the legs and shelf but maybe not. The shelf holds all the various tools for welding and wheels work really well to move heavy equipment around. 

So yeah. Didn't think I'd ever be welding again but life is nothing if not ever changing. 

Trimming tenons

 

In our eternal migrations as humans, we leave our histories behind, so a human yearning to know what came before us is as fixed as the nose on our face

     Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town 

Above are a couple recent chairs. The close one is my design (based at least the bottom off Pete Galberts rocker that appeared in FWW) the farther one is Curtis Buchanan's birdcage rocker. One of these chairs almost put itself together.  The drilled angles were perfect all the measures spot on just easy going. The other one had an extra set of legs made, 3 crests (one drilled acutely not obtuse one broke) 2 sets of arms ( bandsawed them before turning the tenon) and a weird 1" error in the back posts that I only partially fixed. 

My point is that, after paint and finishing, they both look fine and 5 years from now (maybe less) I couldn't tell you which was which. My further point is often just keep going. Because often in chairs are small errors all that noticeable and besides you always need a chair for the neighbor.

So onto the post. One thing that has always vexed me was the little shoulder that forms on the end of the stretcher tenons. I turn my tenons on the lathe with a Veritas tenon cutter ⅝ and because they are green when I turn them initially I have to make them oversize then spin them once dry. This invariably leaves a slight (or not so slight) shoulder which bugs me. 

So I was watching a video with Elia Bizzari and he mentioned how the inside of a steb center is ⅝ and thus will seat the end of the tenon so I can turn and sand it off. 

The problem was the spring loaded spike that comes in the steb center. It made it hard to center the tenon which is kind of the whole point. But a few minutes and a long punch (actually a 4mm Allen wrench) removed the center and now the tenon seats perfectly.  Turn the tenon even little sandpaper and its perfect.  Or as seen in the first picture close enough to perfect. 

Rocker Blade Jig

 

If you can't change it, you got to stand it

Ennis Delmar, BrokeBack Mountain, Annie Proulx

So I come from a casework background and as such I try to use that knowledge and those tools to simplify or at least speed up certain aspects of chair making. 

A good example is how I make my rocker blades. Years ago I made this jig to cut some large circles out of plywood for some project and I altered the dimensions to work with cutting the rocker blades. 

The base for the jig is this 12 by 52 inch piece of ¾ plywood.  Its fastened to the bandsaw table with a couple bolts drilled thru the table. 

The hole that the rocker pin goes in is 46 inches from the blade. As you have probably guessed the bottom of the blade is a section of a circle which seems to work fine and 46 does give a nice steady rocking motion.  

 

I built this one with looks like mostly pocket screws but anything will work provided the bottom stays flat and free from obstructions.  

Below you can see the top side. Its just a big T shaped piece that measures 52 on both axis.  The pin hole is 46 away from the blade and a couple toggle clamps hold it firmly in place. I figure out the angle of the front legs where they meet the floor (which is the same angle as the stretcher) and set the bandsaw table to that angle.  Then clamp it in place and cut it. The typical size of the blank is ½ x 6 x 42 which seems to work well. Also please note that there is a left and right. 

Further note the blade pattern I use is from Pete Galberts rocker plan found in FWW. I use the same pattern on all my chairs the only difference is on smaller chairs I shorten the length a little.

Why did it take so long

 There’s value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There’s no value in work for its own sake

Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Nights

(if you like Sci-fi check out Elizabeth Bear)

One thing thats always bugged me was turning the bottom 6⁰ taper smooth after the end (and thus the center) has been cut off. It's near impossible to find the absolute dead center again and so the piece spins off center which is doesn't help at all. This is especially problematic with arm posts as they are double ended and they are visible...very visible.  I use a tenoner from Elia Bizzari which makes a great 6⁰ tenon but it does leave a rough spot where it ends that must be turned away. 

So tonite after 15 years and maybe hundreds of arm posts and legs it dawned on me to just put the tapered end in the open #2 Morse taper on the drive end and stick the other end (which still has a center) on the live center and there ya go. Bob's your uncle. A perfectly centered piece that can be trued up and looks great. On one hand I'm glad I thought of it on the other I'm kinda wondering why it took 15 years to see this. 

Fast Growth is Stronger (sometimes)

The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say “please” and “thank you” same as any mother’s son.

Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

I noticed this piece of red oak and thought it would be a good opportunity to explain why fast growing wood is, in some cases, stronger than slow growing wood. You can see below the holes (more of a matrix really) that is seen in ring porous woods during early wood growth stage. This is during the spring of the year when the sap runs and the tree is growing quickly.  The size of this growth, ie the width, is pretty consistent year over year. Next as the starches in the roots run out the tree transitions to so called late wood this is the growth that is put on during the summer and early fall.  

Below you can clearly see years of good late wood growth and years of poor late wood growth.  The difference in strength thus becomes the ratio of early growth to late wood. In the lower part of the picture you can see the ratio is about 50 50 vs the upper part where it looks to me to be about 4 or 5 to 1. So the wood in the top of the picture is much stronger than the wood in the bottom. 

A couple points. Early wood and late wood are not to be confused with juvenile (sometimes called reaction) wood which is something else entirely.  

Second this does not apply to diffuse porous woods (like maple) which are stronger the slower they grow. 

So when you are looking at ash logs or oak for chairs be sure to look for faster growing trees. 

(There is no red oak where I live (Northern Maine) so this log came from central New Brunswick and if you zoom the below picture you can clearly see times of fast growth and for some reason two 5 to 8 year periods of very slow growth).

Sanding Sharpener

      

      That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

So some time ago I bought a strip sander from Lee Valley (I've covered using it for curved blades in earlier posts). During covid lockdown I somehow stumbled across the tormek.  Maybe I was thinking about buying the Tormek I don't remember really. Pandemic fog is a thing. 

Anyway I didn't get the tormek but I did buy the guide bar and sought about seeing if I could use it on my sander. 

Well I did get it mounted and was able to use it on carving gouges which are definitely not my strong suit when it comes to sharpening.   

I use the big gouge to trim the tops of the legs and ends of tenons etc.  I noticed the other day it had some pretty good nicks in it so I decided to see how fast I could sharpen it start to finish. 

I used four different grits in the interest of time...180, 600, 1000 and 2000. Normally I wouldn't go all the way down to 180 but like I said there were nicks. 

I didn't take any shots as I was just seeing how quickly I could sharpen from nicked to razor. 

The official time was 2:40. That's it. Another thing I like about the sander is there isn't any (well very little) set up. No stones to wet not paper to dig out. It's literally just set the bevel, mark it make sure it's hitting right and sand for 2 minutes. Done. You can see the results below. Plenty sharp for me. 

New Drill

 

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known

Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Carson McClullers

Well my trusty Makita cordless drill finally gave up the ghost. The batteries died as they will and I was shocked to see the cost of OEM replacements so I bought a new drill kit. I actually went to get a new charger but ended up with a whole new Metabo kit on clearance. 

One reason I hung on so tightly to my old Makita is the small block of wood I had glued exactly in line with the drill bit. This allows me to use a pencil as a sight and in conjunction with a paper circle with concentric circles I can drill accurately thru a chair arm. 

But dead is dead so I needed to remember how I did this years ago. Turns out it isn't that hard. All that's needed is two lengths of ⅜ steel rod and a scrap of wood. 

Here you can see the view looking directly down on the pencil which will be in turn directly in line with the drill bit. 

Just take a ¾x1x1 block of wood and drill a stepped hole. The first hole only goes in a little bit maybe an ⅛ just enough to center the steel rod. Then drill a ⁵/16 thru hole for the pencil (the pencil needs a few wraps of tape to fit snugly). 

Then after cutting a couple blocks with a v groove cut in them chuck the drill rod in the drill and set the rear drill rod in the same cradle block and after putting a little construction adhesive on the block carefully push the rod onto the back of the drill. Then remove the rod and viola a perfectly centered block for a pencil bomb site. 

I actually did it to both my Hitachi drills as the new kit may end up on a job with me and it probably is a little overkill for the shop.